


Capable Takes the Wheel

by harrowmarrow



Series: Two Nights with a Revhead and Redhead [1]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 17:40:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3986950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harrowmarrow/pseuds/harrowmarrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Capable finds a War Boy huddled up in the back of the War Rig, she realizes there are more unexplored territories beyond the Citadel than just the Green Place. And one of them is right under her hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Capable Takes the Wheel

Capable hunkers down next to the shivering War Boy, keeping her hand curled around his large ear to make sure he doesn’t smash his head against the metal frame of the cab again. She’s never been so close to one before. His skin is smooth and spongy, smeared with dirt and grease and silver paint. And tears. She didn’t know they did that. 

She has felt and done so many things today she couldn’t have imagined the previous morning. Scorched in the underbelly of the war rig, bruised crashing into the others where they crouched for hours in a hot, grimy oven. And then the exhilaration of riding up in the cabin, watching the miles of red dirt pass under their wheels, the breathtaking openness of it, stretching all the way to the horizon. She is numb from the fear and exhilaration of the chase, the reality of metal and sand and death ricocheting around them as the rig tore through the desert. 

But this grey flesh, the hard curve of his skull, is the strangest new sensation. The most unexpected. She thought she was racing to a completely new world, the Green Place, and here is a piece of the old one right under her hand. A piece she never got to see up close. He doesn’t move to grab her, stop her fingers brushing over the unfamiliar and exotic terrain of his pale skin and cracked lips. Is this what it will be like to reach the Green Place? An endless series of mesmerizing new discoveries, if they can just push through the horrors that try to hold them back – so many more War Boys like this one. 

Is this what they all are? All those demented, roiling figures she watched from a distance through the window of their Citadel prison, or across a room on the few occasions a boy stumbled somewhere he didn’t belong. Each time it happened, Capable remembered it, burned into her brain by a jolt of panic and excitement, a stark reminder of how small her world was. She didn’t even know how they sounded, really, apart from the great mass cry they would give back to their god and leader from the square. Splendid was the one who understood how it worked, what the boys believed, teaching them to pity the distant masses swarming beneath their feet in the honeycomb of Citadel. 

Her fingers trace his floppy ear, wondering at it. She can barely believe she lived so close to hundreds of creatures just like this one, hulking and lean at once, with a flat chest and narrow hips. It seems unnatural somehow, an odd shape. Hips should be wider than that! And he appears to be wearing some kind of canvas tent cut up into pants, laden with buckles and chains – she has never worn such a thing. She can almost imagine the weight of them dragging off her hips, and pulls in a sharp, clean breath. Imagining that feels like freedom, coming through the other side of this hell. 

But to wear them, she would have to get them off him somehow, and that would leave him quite – Capable’s breath freezes. That is too disturbing. Too frightening to think of what would be left there, what he would be, if the pants were taken. 

He is quiet now, rubbing his head up under hand to feel it, his eyes pressed shut. She lets him do it, curiously observing his need to feel some kind of sensation constantly. This is what it looks like up close, then, the frenetic, agitated energy she saw in the Boys from a distance. He has been beaten down into this relative stillness by a day as bad as hers. 

Capable sinks her face closer, tracing the sunken sockets around his eyes carefully, the grey bit of his nose that has been sewn back on, his cracked, puffy lips. Blue eyes flash open in the black hollows of his face, catching her by surprise. But then they swivel away from her, tracking about like a skittish fly unable to land. 

Why can’t he look at her straight? He has an odd, slanted smile on his face, and she touches it curiously. It turns into a hard swallow and faster swiveling. His breath is a damp pant on her fingertips. She thought his lips looked rough, all puffy and cracked, but they are soft, still streaked with chrome in the corners. Capable’s thumb drags over the dried paint – it isn’t going to come off – and he licks them quickly, her heart lurching at the wet touch. 

“War Boy, do you want to go back? Are you going to try again?”

Capable knows there is something very hard at the center of her light whisper – she needs to know. Could she scream fast enough for the others to hear? She came back here to look for just this kind of threat. She can’t fail the other girls now. And Furiosa. She can’t fail them. 

His head is ducking about now, it’s hard to keep her grip on his ear. He is rocking, that sick, half-alive smile still fixed on his face. 

“They’re coming. They’re still on your tail, you know. There’s no escaping him.”

Capable’s fingers dig around his ear, her voice hardening. “I could push you off myself, right now.” 

He gives a huffing laugh, still rocking, but smothers it at her stern look of pride. He nods quickly. “You could, you could. Look at me. I’m all seized up, rusted. I’m just waiting now.” 

Capable shakes her head slowly. “You don’t have to die like that.” 

He gives another raspy laugh. “They won’t waste another blood bag on me. Not now, not after today.” 

His eyes meet her, sluggish despair settling over him again. Her touch had briefly revived his twitching energy. Something squeezes hard in Capable’s chest at those eyes. They are so large and wet, like the other girls’. Like her own. But they are lodged in a body that is very much otherwise.

“Well, for one thing,” her lips twist with mock authority, imitating a tone familiar to her from Splendid’s lectures, “You don’t have to die with this on your face.” 

She hesitates, and then leans the inch needed to lick the corner of one puffy lip, softening the paint. He tastes like metal and dirt and sweat, and when she rubs at the spot with her finger again she finds a frozen war boy beneath her hand, staring at nothing. He barely breathes. 

“There.” It is a hushed whisper, uncertain. “Now you’re clean of him. You can be whatever you –“ 

The boy bursts up, flattening her to the side of the hollowed-out cab in his scramble to get through the empty back window and climb down the outside of the rig. Capable rockets up behind him, pure adrenaline pumping through her veins. She leaps upon him at the window, grappling to keep him from escaping.

“Stop! War Boy! They’ll kill you!” He pauses at that, and she seizes his arms. “We can’t let you go back to him now.”

“She won’t bother with me – she saw me, thrown off by a lot of breeders. An Imperator knows when to save her bullets.” 

“You could trace the tracks back, lead them to us –“

He gives her a puzzled, squinting sneer. “They’re already tracking you, breeder –“ 

Capable throws him away from her, making him scramble to catch hold of the outside of the rig. 

“You call me that again, and you’ll go under the wheels.” 

The boy’s eyes dart back and forth, not understanding where the cold fury in her voice comes from. 

“I’m not a breeder. I am not a thing! Neither was Splendid. We’re not going back there. Never, do you understand? This is our chance. Our one chance to live. We won’t throw it away for a burnt-out War Boy. She will stop you.” 

He hangs off the back of the rig, glancing up at her and then down at the ground, trying to make sense of her speech. Capable feels a wave of hopeless anger wash through her. How would he understand? He knows nothing and wants nothing except what has been fed to him – the fate he cannot avoid much longer. Feeling her heart tanning a little further into tough leather, Capable leans out of the back window and hooks her arm under his.

“Come back in. If you keep quiet, so will I. You can rest here.” 

He shakes his head with a violent shiver, considering the ground again. She grabs his ear to stop him, turn him back to her. He drinks her in with quick glances, that grisly half-smile pulling his cheek. His voice is gruff, shy.

“I can’t. Not with you here. That’s not – not mine.” 

“What isn’t? You’ll need some rest, whatever you do.” 

“You’re a breeder. And a shiny one, real shiny. One of his. Immortan.” 

Capable goes numb, her eyes locked for a long time on the horizon. He has merged back into the masses of them, Immortan’s vermin, fit only for despise and contempt and fear. She could be frightened now, for there was a reason he left the cab – this reason. Breeding. She is scared, but she has been terrified for such a long time today, she doesn’t feel it. It doesn’t speed her heart, or chill her skin. She is just bone tired, and aching deep inside like she is cracked all the way to the bottom of the earth. 

Capable walks woodenly back through the cab, climbing out onto the top of the rig and sitting down with her knees pulled up. She rocks slightly, her eyes fixed on the stars. The Green Place. The Green Place. The Green – 

“Uh …” The faint grunt from behind her shoulder pauses, casting about for something else to call her and completely at a loss. 

“Capable.”

“Good, good. Shiny name, that one.” It is too hurried, fumbling. His hand nudges her shoulder through the cab window, squeezing erratically half way through. “Nux.”

“Nux?” She turns to him with a smile starting through her weariness, and he startles back into the cab, fighting to keep that smile off his face. He shuffles further away as she slips in beside him, his one heavy boot dragging. “I didn’t mean, just then – I mean, of course you wouldn’t – I wouldn’t –“ 

“Can you even?” She peers at him curiously again, his lean form hunched up on the ledge of the back window, his pasty skin an eerie blue against the dark night sky. “Breed?” He twitches, shrugging, and picks at the peeling paint of the cab. “Immortan told us that you can’t.”

“It’s not our place. We belong on the road. That is where we find glory.” He turns his back on her, looking out at the tracks they have left behind across the vast desert. His voice is thick and wistful. “That’s all we want, to ride historic …” It seems he might be slumping back into his despondent state, the spinning wheels behind his eyes slowing down to a dead stop. 

“And what about me?”

He turns back and gestures rather lamely at her mid-section. “You …” _Breed_. 

“Haven’t you ever wanted something besides dirt and axle grease?” 

He looks at her like he doesn’t register the question, and Capable’s jaw hardens. She crosses to him, and puts her hand boldly on his stomach, grabbing his wrist so he doesn’t fall out the window, which could be a real possibility. He swallows rapidly as she feels across the ridges of scars, his bare foot kicking at the cab wall, scraping along the metal to get some other, more familiar sensation and stay grounded.

“But you’re …” It is a weak protest as Capable slides between his knees. She answers with a firm whisper of her own, driving straight through his ear and out into the night, all the way back through the desert to the Citadel.

“I am not his.” 

Warmth and strength floods through Capable at the muffled pressure of his body against her, sliding her hands with brave determination over his hard, alien shape, finding the ridge of his spine and the planes of his tensed muscles. She picks up his limp hands, stained by grease and dust – so much larger than Cheedo’s or Toast’s! How strange it is to realize her hand is small, like a bird’s claw. It never seemed that way before. She sets them around her hips.

There. She has done it. Capable’s heart thrums in her chest, wild with daring alarm. She is in a War Boy’s arms. Anyone’s arms, anyone who is not – not – 

“Say something, quickly. Just say something, boy! Nux –“ She is clinging to him, her mouth pressed to his ear, scrambling to feel everything different and new. “Hold me. Press, like this – here, harder –“ 

Nux is slow to catch onto the clamping motion she wants, awkwardly squeezing his long arms around her. His cracked lips fall upon her shoulder, and he tries to fill it up with babbling instead of her skin, keeping his mouth turned off her.

“Immortan, Immortan, I will walk in the halls of Valhalla – Valhalla –“ He mantra is muffled by her ear in his mouth, he has latched onto it helplessly, sucking and biting to test the difference between her soft lobe and the crunchy shape of the rest. 

Capable shakes her head to stop him, a mad laugh rising through her. Could she even have imagined this twenty four hours ago? The whole world has changed, flipped upside down, she can hardly tell the sky from the sand. His hands drag slowly around her waist, startling off her at the dimples in her lower back. They shakily return and jerk away several times, like she is a hot engine hood. 

“Glory be, you’re so … so shiny and clean … so chrome …” 

Capable hugs him hard, tears starting in her eyes at how urgent and important this is, half hanging out the back of the rig in the middle of the night. She might have been curled up here alone in the dark, staring out at the tracks that run back to the Citadel. Trying desperately not to be consumed by the past she is leaving behind and repeating hollow dreams of an unclear future. But instead her arms are full of this jittery, thudding war boy who lost everything today, just as she did. But he doesn’t know how to dream of anything else, even a hollow future, and she rubs against him desperately, her arms winding around his pale neck. 

He is starting to rattle like a boiling pan, and she pushes away in case it is in protest. She would never impose anything. Never. No matter how badly she needs to try something – anything – that could give her hope. 

Nux is holding onto the roof of the cabin, his stomach seized up like he’s going to be sick. Capable brushes the red hair from her face, reaching out a cautious hand to him.

“Are you alright?”

He jerks where he hangs, giving a burst of unhinged laughter. It peters out, his skin ashen grey. 

“No.”

He swings about and retches out the back of the cab. 

Capable hunkers away from him, bewildered, watching his knotted form, the moonlight marking the deep groove of his spine as he heaves. He spits the last of it out with another ragged laugh and sags back in, thumping down on the floor of the cabin with his knees splayed. He breathes deeply for a while, Capable bent away from him with her nose slightly scrunched. Eventually he looks over at her, and his blue eyes seem steadier in their blackened hollows, his smile more free.

“Think I’m ready now. Just like before a long ride, when it might be my last. I get stirred up then, too.” His knee twitches, his body racked by an after-tremor. “But it never happens twice. Not once I’m going.” His hand flops out between them, as if she’s meant to take it, rather like gripping a gear shift. 

Capable stares at him with round eyes, her bare toes working over the metal floor. Should she take it? He thinks she knows how, when all that she knows is – 

She swings up to straddle him, clasping his hand. His body bucks up beneath her immediately, straining, his teeth bared with a wild light in his eyes. “Yes, yes, we are riding –“ He has scooped her up and turned her over, her heart bursting in panic in her throat, but it is all a jumble, a scramble, he is backing off of her again immediately. “No, no – I’ll be the lancer, you drive.” 

“Wait – !” It is a gasp as he drags her in close to his face, grunting with a keen, hammering edge, and then backing down, pressing his bare back to the floor of the cab, waiting. What is this – some bizarre ritual to determine who has control, who is driving? She doesn’t understand, except clearly his adrenaline has kicked in and he doesn’t know how to deal with it, or rather he does, it just isn’t the right way, not right for this. 

Capable has a sudden vision of Cheedo’s head popping up from the rig’s cabin to see what all the ruckus is about – Nux certainly looks like he expects her to take a running start at him, and then slam around the cab like they are two pursuit vehicles battling for a narrow road. He is already jumping a bit by himself, unable to keep still in his prone position. He is starting to rant again too. 

“Oh glory be, breeder, what a night! On the war rig itself, with the wastes ahead and Immortan coming, yes, this is it, the end – I’ll go out quick, infamous – do it! Glory, he’ll shred me –“ 

Capable stuffs her hand over his mouth, and Nux sets into her palm, licking and biting. With a curse, Capable shoves her fingers down his throat to stop him. He hacks a bit, but it does help to calm him, blinking up at her. 

“You’re right, right. There’s lot of time, lots of time to …” He trails off with a pant, looking up at her with a bright gleam in his eyes that has no idea whatsoever how to finish that thought, what it is they could do.

Capable hisses down at him. “We don’t have time! No time, if you keep on like that, do you understand? You have to be quiet.” 

Nux’s eyes go round, like he’s only just remembering who is driving at the other end of the rig. He nods quickly, his hands winding in the wrappings at her hips. 

“Right, right, my blood bag’s down there. He’s a healthy one, and a good shot too – why is he still here? I thought Furiosa’d –“ 

Capable leans over and stops his cracked lips with her own. He goes limp immediately. 

His tongue is softer than she expected, making her tremble deep inside. And it is not just his tongue, but the sour taste of his retching – the fact that she made his body sick with excitement and fear just by touching it. He smells like hot grease and guzzolene baked down through his skin by the sun and wind. When she pulls back, he stares into her hanging curtain of red hair like it is the night sky, his voice harsh and hushed. “Right, right … you drive.” 

Capable is reassured for the moment, but she knows she is sitting on an explosive combination of reckless aggression and cowering panic in his lanky frame, ready to ricochet around the cab if it is rubbed the wrong way. And she’s so far from knowing what she’s doing with her own body, let alone a nervous War Boy, that some of Toast’s direct prudence would be wise. 

Trusting that he can keep his mouth shut for a moment on his own, she unwinds the wrappings around her breasts and bites it to rip it into two ribbons. She leans over, her breasts hanging, to search Nux’s face, for he has suddenly cranked his head to the side. His knees kick up – a spurt of panic. Capable smothers him with her weight and red hair.

“It’s okay – it’s alright. It’s alright.” 

His kicks grow weaker, and Capable ignores the way her own knees are trembling, straddling him. She is slick and warm, sliding along his coarse black pants and the hard bulge beneath them, pressing the buckles up into her. But she can’t rub against him yet, she needs to be sure. Sure he will stay where he is, and not flail out too quickly, turn her over like he did before in that heart-stopping moment. But she also needs to be careful with him, make sure it’s alright. She feels across the scars on his chest, grasping for something to say, some way to put this he will understand. 

“This … did you do this? What is it …” 

He has hiked up a bit, looking down at the pattern on his chest. The motion shifts her hips along the hard shape in his pants, making her body cry out with the need to get something inside her. Something that moves freely, pounding hard with youthful strength and sweat, something entirely new, like she has dreamed – 

With shaking hands, Capable begins tying the War Boy’s arms to the frame of the cabin. For a moment he is docile, babbling on like she hoped he would, something about his car’s engine – apparently, the inspiration for what is engraved in his flesh. His arms pull against the tight wrappings, his feet suddenly scrambling. 

“Wait, what are you –“

“You told me to drive. That makes you this – this machine.” She traces the lines along his chest, stammering. “You work on it before you take take it out on the road, don’t you? You make sure everything’s ready, everything’s … safe. You haul it up in chains and get underneath, and do … whatever makes it right, makes it work.” 

Nux is panting, his eyes still alarmed, but it could be more than that pumping his chest up and down, stiffening the hard shape jammed between her legs. 

“Yes, you – you work on me, breeder. Then I’ll be ready. I’ll be so bright and chrome, you’re a black thumb at this. What a night, what a way to –“ 

Capable claps her hand over his mouth again. “Just … you have to be quiet.” Nux nods, sucking on her hand before she can pull it away. She gives a quieter groan to herself. “Oh mothers …” His head falls back, his eyes pressed closed, his voice channeling religious reverence.

“Make me ready, make me chrome …”

“I said quiet.” She breathes it into his ear. “If you even can …” 

He clenches his teeth as her hands fumble with the buckle of his heavy black pants, trying not to wriggle too hard in over-active agitation and throw her off. 

“Oh glory, oh breeder –“

“ _Capable_. Please, Nux …” 

The buckle releases, and she tugs the pants down. He is slim and pale, clenched against the metal floor of the cabin, and Capable stares at the shape she felt. It is long and throbbing, moving up and down with his fast breathes. A string of lumps runs down from his hip to his inner thigh, growing in size, like the ones on his shoulder. But his dick is clean and hard and pink, turning a darker ashen grey at the base. 

Capable almost gasps in relief – there are no marks on it, none at all. Now it seems silly to have wondered what it would be like, to have been frightened. It is just another bit of flesh, matching the rest of him. Like an elbow, or the fingers he has wound around his ears, digging into the back of his head. Capable is struck by wonder again – are all the War Boys like this? That whole crowd she would peer at below, swinging up onto war poles and diving behind wheels. 

He goes rigid as she takes it in her hand and pulls slowly down it once. She can almost see his heart hammering through his ribs. He looks at her and she mouths it to help him, “Capable. Capable.” His tongue stutters as she strokes again, but his blue eyes stay locked with hers.

“Capable … is that shining me. Am I ready?” 

Capable has tears stinging in her eyes, for he got her name out, awkwardly at last. He might not again, she might hear ‘breeder’ at the height of it, but if she does, she will remember this to cover it up – the stunned whisper of her name like a prayer, its sanity fraying at the edges. 

She strokes him quickly, alarmed by the way he arches beneath her like he was hit by a shock. But it is running through her, too, like an electric current. She _will_ do this, right here, with no walls around her, before anyone can stop her. Quite rapidly it looks like he might throw up again, except this time it would be a different kind of finish. Before he can, Capable tears away the wrappings at her hips and gets on top of him, sliding it quickly inside.

The War Boy's arms strain at the ties, his body jerking beneath her, his eyes flown wide and a rattling gurgle in his throat. With trembling care for both of them, Capable sits still, letting them get a feel for how it fits. This is enough – it would be too much to move. She simply hangs over him, concentrating wholly on the full sensation she wanted, plunged all the way up to her belly button. It feels like looking deep at the stars, the same sense of it being impossible to grasp, to keep. 

And it is impossible – he is jittering more violently between her knees, his eyes slammed shut like he can’t deal with any more sensation or he will short out. He starts to grunt and buck and Capable grabs hold of his floppy ears, mashing his swollen lips into her own to muffle the sound. The same hot jolt runs through her at his soft tongue, but this time it is followed by three quick thrusts, slamming into her from below. The last comes with a shuddering twist of his hips, releasing deep inside her. 

Capable hangs onto him as he slumps back to the floor of the cab. After a long moment he whispers, his teeth chattering, his nose shoved in her neck. 

“Valhalla ... so wet, so warm. It comes from you, like Immortan's spring. Inside, you are -" 

He swallows hard at the fingers digging in his chest. Capable is biting back years of pain and denial, a ragged laugh sparkling in her eyes, for she can hear her own suffering giving way in the amazed sound of his voice. She presses as much of herself to him as she can, the ridges of his scars hard against her soft belly. The urgency of her need to be mashed together goes far deeper than pleasure, it seems to permeate the dark red earth all around them, the endless rumble and grind of the war rig passing over rough ground. He has known this kind of desperation much longer than her, the sense there might not be another day. He has even wished for it. But he didn’t know how to use it like this, for a moment completely consumed in the present. Now he does. They both do. 

The hum of the massive engine beneath them buzzes up through her knees, soothing her just enough to enjoy the feeling of his soft dick still resting within her. Slowly she squeezes and rubs over it until she is so hot and wet she will simply go mad if she can’t … 

In the most gentle, perceptive move he has made yet, the War Boy tilts his hips so the full, floppy length of it is plugging her, and her pleasure crests, tipping into a hard clamp of flooding ecstasy. 

He starts beneath her, trying to sit up and stick his nose in her face. “What was that? Are you – are you –“ 

Capable laughs more freely, and the seeping warmth in her body can’t ease the hard edge of it entirely. She is already cooling, growing still – this moment is over. She pulls off him, untying his arms and winding the wrappings around herself again, as best she can. 

He clumsily grabs a chain in his pants to hike them up around his waist. Then he sits in a wary daze, only half seeing the stars, rubbing at the places he was tied. Capable pulls herself up and his eyes spin about the cabin, unable to meet her. She gives him a kind smile and his ear perks to catch her soft words. 

“I’m fine. I finished my ride.” Nux seems to glow in the pale light, his round eyes fixed away from her over his shoulder. It isn’t clear he even knew women were like men that way. “You were very … shiny, Nux. Very chrome.” 

He is rocking a bit, curled over, hiding his face fully in his shoulder.

“You’re a black thumb is all. I’m – I’m rusted, jammed.” 

His fingers find the lumps on his leg through his pants, and Capable wants to go over and stop him. She hugs her thin shawl around her shoulders, chilled by the breeze. And the realization this was not just a moment – not just one, anyway. She is hardly going to push him off the rig now. 

And somehow she can tell he’s not going to jump off himself, something about the way his booted and bare feet are bobbing against the metal floor, tapping unevenly. He shared something with her, something they’ve both been denied, like a flare going off in the sky, burnt into their eyes wherever they look. A flare that points towards the hollow future, wherever the war rig is heading. He’s on it now.

She crouches down beside him again, resting her hand on what’s left of the seat frame in the cab. “Go back in here. I’ll get you some water.” He immediately worms his way back under the seat, catching her wrist before she rises.

“And you, where will you be.” 

She smiles at him as gently as she can. “I’ll be here. I’m supposed to keep watch behind us.” 

From the shadow of the seat frame, the War Boy’s bald head nods quickly, his blue eyes alert. Capable is suddenly sure she won’t be carrying the burden of watching alone. An eye well trained to see the first sign of a war party on the horizon will already be looking.


End file.
